Paul was a bright boy. Ever since he had first been able to read, that’s all he had been told, and when he picked up his father’s interest of geology, his family was simply ecstatic. Imagine it, little Paulie would become a great cave explorer, like his father and grandfather before him!

And Paul happily accepted this new fact of life. He was good at rocks. Nothing else mattered.

Once school came around, that was all he could work on. Had he tried, he would surely have gotten alright, if not good grades in the other subjects. But he didn’t. Any subject that wouldn’t help him in some way towards his dream of becoming a geologist could just as way have been thrown out the window.

His report card was a myriad of A’s and F’s, and he was alright with it. His parents didn’t quite like it, but as long as he followed in his ancestor’s footsteps, what did they care?

And so, until university, Paul lived life as a reclusive, having no friends and no desire to have any. By sheer luck, he had gotten acquainted with and befriended two fellow students during a school project, Robert and Johanna, but that was as far as his social circle reached. They knew very well he was a rather strange guy, but in a cave, he was a man you could rely on.

That is, if he’s not alone.

Which is exactly what had happened.

He and his group had, as a project for university, been assigned a cave to explore. Of course, it had already been thoroughly excavated, checked out and discovered entirely. All that was in that cave were crayfish and the occasional axolotl. Nothing peculiar, nothing remarkable. The idea was simple: a group of professors had hidden a flag somewhere in the reaches of the cave, and their task was to find it. Simple, yet effective.

They had an entire day for this project, and afterward they were to write an extensive report on the cave, it’s formations as well as, optionally, the life forms inside.

Paul was confident. He had been exploring caves three time’s this one’s size since he was seven, and there was nothing that could surprise him.

He met his two teammates a fair bit outside the cave by a mac. Johanna was second to Paul, having decided to bicycle her way there, luggage and all. She was a lively, sporty girl with an infectious smile and big green eyes. The first thing she did after stepping off her bike, entirely unaffected by the steep hill she had recently climbed, was: “I’m not the first?”

Johanna believed sternly that if her body was strong and ready for any situation, she could delve into any cave unhindered. Which was only partially true, but it did give her a very good reason to feed her training-addiction. Paul simply shook his head at her comment, a little smirk revealing his true thoughts on the subject.

“Well, then again, you cheated!” Johanna said, immediately bursting out in laughter at her own little joke, something she did often. Paul couldn’t help but snicker along with her. “I guess you’re right, Joey,” Paul replied, happily using her little nickname despite her numerous protests on the matter. However, before “Joey” had a moment to protest the use of her nickname once more, Robert slid across the parking lot, creating a glaringly obvious tire-track. Hopping off his flaming red Harley and removing his flame-adorned helmet, the pale-faced redhead sloppily asked “what’d I miss?”

Paul rolled his eyes at the comment, but Johanna chose to humour him. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you just missed it, it was here just a second ago!” with obviously fake worry, her eyebrows clenched into a strained concern. “W-, what?! What’d I miss, seriously?!?” Robert cried back, his shimmering blue eyes anxiously prodding Johanna for information about what this thing he recently missed was. Unconsciously, the corner of Johanna’s mouth lifted right up, revealing a sly smirk. “You JUST missed the joke!” Johanna finally said. Robert was stunned. “...What does that mean?...” he asked shyly, his left eyebrow rising in proportion to his curiosity. Johanna rolled her eyes and smiled brightly. “Nothing, Bob, let’s get going, we don’t have all day!” she stated authoritatively. Despite what one may thing, Johanna was, and had always been, the captain of this ship. And both Paul and Robert were completely alright with this.

The cave itself was in the very outskirts of a rather large, dense forest of pines, behind an unassuming old troll-looking rock. The rock itself had affectionately been dubbed “the Guardian Troll” and the cave itself was “the Mouth of the Salamander” which really wasn’t all that bad compared to platy of other caves with less… fashionable names.

Actually finding the cave itself should have been the hard part, if it wasn’t for the fact that Robert had memorized the entire map of not only the cave itself, but the surrounding landscape as well. In short, he knew the way there.

“W-, wait up Joey, I-, I can’t move that fast…” Robert complained as he panted and placed a hand on his knee, attempting to climb right up a hill. Johanna was already at the top, and Paul was almost up as well. Almost. “It’s not my fault all you do is stay inside eating crisps, Bob!” Johanna thundered down mercilessly. “Go easy on him, Joey,” Paul commented, trying desperately to hide his panting under his breath, which was harder than it seemed. He had to admit, he wasn’t exactly a trekker either. “Shut up Paulie, you aren’t exactly any better, either!” Johanna shouted, redirecting her attack from Robert to Paul.

“The cave is right down this hill here, right Bob?” Johanna asked once the other two had fully climbed the hill. Robert held up a hand to signal his need for just a short break. “It-, huff, puff, yeah, it’s, umm, right down there,” Robert said in between his gasps and groans, pointing to a humongous rock, surrounded by dense vegetation. “...Are you sure?” Paul asked, raising an eyebrow in doubt. He knew it didn’t make any sense to mistrust Robert of all people, but he partially just wanted to make sure. “Oh, yeah, of course, see that rock over there is the Troll thing, duh, and it’s covered in square goose neck moss, and those threes over there are firs as compared to all the other pines, so yeah, this is the place,” Robert rabbled all sloppy-lipped. Paul was impressed, as he always was, but Johanna simply brushed it off. “Alright, let’s go down then!” Johanna burst out, jumping down with great vitality. Robert groaned and followed. Paul groaned inwardly.

The entrance itself was extremely small, only barely big enough for one grown man to crawl through, truly fitting its name. It really felt like it would swallow you up it you dared to enter. They dared to enter.

Robert went first as the slowest and most assured one geographically. Johanna was at the very end, carrying most of the luggage due to her bulk, and Paul was in the middle for no particular reason. “Hey, Bob, how much longer?” Johanna asked after about five minutes of crawling through a narrow tunnel at an agonizingly slow pace due to Robert already being quite exhausted from the trekk. “Around fifteen minutes more, and then there’ll be a large space after whi-,” “alright, got it, thanks Bob” Paul quickly intervened, stopping Robert’s ramble right in its tracks. Robert mumbled something mean incoherently, but Johanna simply thanked him along with Paul.

And lo and behold, in fifteen minutes on the dot, Robert gracefully stood up, took a deep breath of cool, moust cavern-air, and sighed deeply. Paul soon followed, shaking his legs to get the jittery ants out of them. Finally, Johanna emerged, and immediately started stretching in a rhythmic and used manner. “Alright, where to next, Bob?” Johanna finally asked, standing up quickly, only to hit the roof and shrink back in pain. “Yeah, it’s not too tall in here,” Robert stated bluntly, something he really should have said earlier. Then again, neither he nor Paul were tall enough to hit their heads on the ceiling. They were actually pretty short.

“But, to answer your question, I’m not sure. The road is pretty straight from here on, but it will split a few times on occasion, so we should really look out for that,” Robert said, almost admitting, albeit in a roundabout way, that he didn’t know where to go. Sure, he knew the layout of the entire cave, but how was he supposed to know where they hid the flag? Paul nodded agreeingly. “Whatever happens, we won’t split up,” Paul stated matter-of-factly, to which both Johanna and Robert agreed.

At least the path ahead would be one to walk.

For around two hours or so, the three stooges wandered around the cave, backtracking every now and then to check out every path they didn’t take. Eventually, they reached a rather large opening in the cave where they decided to sit down and rest their weary legs, as well as eating lunch. Lunch was important. Of course, none of them had brought anything that had to be heated. Johanna had brought a homemade tuna salad, Robert had brought a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, and Paul had brought a ham sandwich. Simple stuff, but edible.

As they sat there, eating their food and discussing the most recent gossip at the university in the light of a little battery driven wind-up lantern, Paul happened to notice something. There was a hole in the wall. Sure, there were plenty of holes and stalactites and stalagmites and whatever around, but there was something strange about this particular hole. The very entrance to the hole was quite broad, but as it got further in, it narrowed significantly. What’s more, there was something about the way this hole was created that just seemed… off.

Paul put his sandwich to the side and grabbed the lantern, crawling towards the hole, too tired to stand up. On closer examination, it almost seemed like the hole was made entirely of… bite marks? Like an extremely small little thing had just taken a bite of the wall repeatedly, eventually eating so much a hole was created. Paul tried to shine the lantern down the hole, but it was too deep for the faint light.

“Hey, Bob, can you bring one of the flashlights over here?” Paul asked Robert, holding out his hand behind him. Robert, his legs filled with metaphorical ants, groaned at the prospect of having to move, yet was too submissive to speak back. Grabbing a flashlight from his bag, he crawled over to Paul and placed it in his open hand. “What’re you looking at, anyways?” Robert asked, peering over Paul’s shoulder to take a peek. He was instantly struck. “Th-, that’s not supposed to be there…” he commented weakly. “I thought so…” Paul replied in a hushed tone.

Shaking the flashlight one or two times to liven it up, he turned it on and pointed it down the hole. After about two or three meters of the makeshift tunnel, there was a hole, and it didn’t seem like it was made by biting and chewing. In fact, it looked like whatever did the biting and chewing had just.. Fallen. Straight through the floor.

“Hrmm…” Paul mumbled, his imagination running wild. This was neither man-made nor natural. Something is in here, something new and exciting. Paul could feel his adrenaline surge. He really wanted to know what made that hole. But unlike the thing that made that hole, he could not dig through the cave wall to find where it went, and neither was he allowed to.

Johanna, now curious as to what her two male teammates were looking at, stood up and walked over to them. She was just about to ask what all the fuss was about when she noticed the little bite marks. She furrowed her eyebrows. Now that was certainly interesting. But they didn’t have time to solve cave-mysteries. They had already wasted 2 hours just wandering around!

“Hup hup, time to get moving!” Johanna commanded as she clapped her hands together, instantly gather Robert and Paul’s attention. Paul looked up at her pleadingly, but she ignored it. “We REALLY have to get going, alright?” she said in a motherly sort of fashion. Both Paul and Rober sighed at approximatly the same time, stood up on wobbely legs, and followed her out of the chamber, of course not forgetting their all-important luggage. This time, Johanna walked at the front to ensure they walked at a quick pace, Robert in the middle to direct everybody, and Paul at the back.

As they walked, Paul could swear he heard something. Some strange noise he couldn’t quite describe. Like a crunching kind of cound, reverbating through the halls as if the cave itself was chewing on, well, itself, perheaps? Paul really couldn’t tell, but something here was off.

That is, until he could clearly hear rock split and rubble crack and collide. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, above, below, beside, but wherever it was, he had to say something. “Guys, I think something i-,” Robert attempted to say, beating Paul by a mere second, but he couldn’t finnish his sentance before the earth quite literally came crashing down upon them.

Paul felt how something large and strong plummeted on his chest, causing something in his chest to crack loudly, most likely a rib. Paul attempted to scream out in pain and surprise, only to find his mouth stuffed with dust and gravel falling from above. The heavy smash of the rock caused him to fall to the floor, smaller rocks soon falling above to tenderize him with their non-stop beatings. Feeling just how much dust was in the air, Paul knew not to open his eyes, yet he knew he had to atleast know if Robert and Johanna were alright. And, to nobody’s surprise, he couldn’t see anything past the sudden cloud of dust.

But just as the rocks started becoming more sparse, just as he thought it might be over, heheard another bony crack from above, even heavier than the previous one, and within only a moment of panic, the entire roof above them crashed down, landing squarely on his legs, or rather, his calves. The sudden force of around 600 kilos of pure rock did it’s fair share of damage, and even without being able to look, Paul could clearly feel both of his legs break under the pressure like a pair of toothpicks under a rock.

Opening one of his eyes forcibly, he could see that everything in front of him, where Roger and Johanna should be, was just a huge mountain of rocks. In pure desperation, Paul screamed out:

“OH GOD, OH LORD, SOMEONE!! ROBERT, JOHANNA!!! ANYONE, HELP!!!!”

He had never thought himself to be someone who would scream in that manner, he had always thought himself the stoic type, but… you never act as you think you do, and this was certainly one of those situations.

Five anxious minutes passed.

The dust setteled, and Paul could finally take a gander at understanding the situation. The constant pain in his legs, growing worse each time the boulders resting upon them shifted ever so slightly, didn’t make his thinking much clearer, but he could atleast try. They had brought their phones down here. Everybody had their phone, hell, even he had his phone! But, alas, no connection. There was no way for him to contact Robert or Johanna, or to call the proper euthorities. And even if he did call 911 over, they might as well get lost in the cave!

Robert and Johanna…

Paul could only hope that they were alright. They had to be. Johanna was super strong like a gorilla and Robert knew this place inside-out, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to escape! Paul, on the other hand… felt very useless.

But just as he was about to sink into thoughtsof hopelessness and despair, he saw something in the distance. From a hole in the wall he hadn’t seen before, a light shone brightly. Not bright as a star, but like a little light-bulb, making everything around it light up.

The light got brighter and brighter, nearer and nearer, and Paul couldnät help but hold his breath in anticipation.

And, finally, he saw…

A crayfish?...

No, not just a crayfish!

On the back of the gray-ish crayfish, a little pink lizard - an axolotl - sat perched, looking very… cute. It had long reddish-pinkish tendrils on the back of it’s head, as well as it’s back, and on the head, there was also, strangely enough, a little antenna with a large, glowing sphere on it, like a lure on an anglerfish. The mouth had ever-so-slightly jagged teeth, and around the lure there were small bumps, circling the head, almost like some sort of crown.

All, and all, it looked… surreal.

Paul knit his brows in confusion.

And then the little axolotl waved.